Too short
This game was intriguing, and it did start to grip me, but ultimately it’s way too short and low-tech for a paid-for experience. Had it been free, I would have rated it a four, maybe. Creative, and some lovely word play and imagery. But just nowhere near enough of it. The story had just got exciting and it ended. Waste of money, for me.
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Interesting concept but short and sometimes irritating
I applaud the designers for this unique idea, but I found the “right” sentences were not always logical, or other possibilities that were equally valid — e.g. “Yeah sure” instead of “Yeah right”—were not accepted. And the game is very short for the money.
AmaZinG ... hOurS oF FUn
As a class we did Grayout over the course of 3 weeks. The kids say: creepy, fascinating disturbing... but in a good way. Exciting and full of twists. Make a new one! We already did Blackbar.
Less than an hour of gameplay
A very interesting concept, but the story is lazy, as it seems most of the effort went into the word play (which was often clever). Beyond that, it provided less than an hour of gameplay. To be fair, that may be because I had to look up instructions online. Not answers: instructions. The game provided none. Do I use all the words? Am I supposed to form grammatically correct sentences or just whatever gets my message across? Even with instructions, it was difficult to know what I was trying to say, what my response was supposed to be. Maybe I missed something, but this game was not worth the price it asks for. Bonus points for mentioning a polyamorous relationship though, I guess.
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Utter rubbish / maybe broken
What a waste of time and money.
Well written but broken
Am interesting world and concept and I liked Blackbar- unfortunately there’s a game breaking bug that makes it impossible to progress past the (irritatingly obscure) “waiting for godot” reference. I checked a couple of walkthroughs, the “correct” answer doesn’t work, impossible to move forward...
Avoid
Starts out well. Until context starts to shift and you’re left with dozens of possibilities where only one is deemed correct. Goes from challenging to tedious surprisingly quickly.
Not a recommendation of mine
Logic isn’t great from clue to clue. No ability for hints, not really great leading. It ended up being mostly a waste of time and I’m deleting it without finishing because I’m so bored with it.
Good story, not really a game.
I loved Blackbar, so gave Grayout a whirl, too.
The story is wonderful; it places you in a chilling dystopian scenario with sadistic keepers and little hope of escape. I enjoyed it.
But as for gameplay, there’s not much here. The only “puzzle” comes from trying to figure out what the game designers thought my responses to other characters ought to be. And if the game designers thought, for example, that I ought to respond “That’s the right answer” then saying “That is correct” or “You’re right” or “That is right” or “You’re not wrong there” or even “That is the right answer” won’t be accepted by the game.
I understand they wanted me to experience the frustration of helplessness and aphasia. But this is just the frustration of pure guessing, like randomly trying numbers on a bike lock until it opens. There’s never the delighted feeling you get when you finally figure out a puzzle based on cleverly hidden clues. There are barely any hidden / contextual clues to discover. The rest is just moving words around until you guess right.
The story is wonderful; it places you in a chilling dystopian scenario with sadistic keepers and little hope of escape. I enjoyed it.
But as for gameplay, there’s not much here. The only “puzzle” comes from trying to figure out what the game designers thought my responses to other characters ought to be. And if the game designers thought, for example, that I ought to respond “That’s the right answer” then saying “That is correct” or “You’re right” or “That is right” or “You’re not wrong there” or even “That is the right answer” won’t be accepted by the game.
I understand they wanted me to experience the frustration of helplessness and aphasia. But this is just the frustration of pure guessing, like randomly trying numbers on a bike lock until it opens. There’s never the delighted feeling you get when you finally figure out a puzzle based on cleverly hidden clues. There are barely any hidden / contextual clues to discover. The rest is just moving words around until you guess right.
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Bad Design
The app still does not support the iPhone X and has very few design elements. Changing it to support it would be easy. Dev is either unskilled or lazy.
Too restrictive
I loved the idea of playing with language and the challenge of expressing thoughts using limited words. I hated trying to guess the RIGHT thing to say - what the game expected.
Developers: this would be really cool to experiment with some AI and language parsing - a kind of double-sided Turing test
Developers: this would be really cool to experiment with some AI and language parsing - a kind of double-sided Turing test
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I don’t get it.
This is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. I have no idea how it got so many glowing reviews. The answers to the puzzles are completely arbitrary and oftentimes make zero sense. Do not recommend.
Love the idea
But there needs to be some kind of hint system. I’ve been stuck on the same “level” for hours unable to get it right. If it at leas gave the first word I might be able to steer it into the right direction but there are so many different sentences you can make with all the words given to you. I don’t want to look it up either and just be spoon fed the right answer.
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Interesting, but sometimes too difficult
It does often turn out to be nothing more than a guessing game sometimes, and there were several parts where I ended up searching for answers online because I had no clear idea what to do (and upon reading some of the later answers, sometimes I had no idea how the heck I was supposed to figure the puzzle out). Very interesting story and idea, though, just wish it could’ve been something more.
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Dumb
It’s a guessing game that has no logic. Just read the story on google and save yourself feeling annoyed you spent money on this
A simple idea well executed
A good story with a very simple method of execution, well worth the cost for the time and entertainment it brings - recommended.
For the developers: On a few screens, the text ended without completing a sentence, I don’t think it was deliberate, but perhaps a formatting error for the phone. Nevertheless, it didn’t detract from the gameplay at all.
For the developers: On a few screens, the text ended without completing a sentence, I don’t think it was deliberate, but perhaps a formatting error for the phone. Nevertheless, it didn’t detract from the gameplay at all.
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Not easy, but a good purchase
Amazing how character-driven this seemingly simple app is. Feels almost...real. Thank goodness it's not!
Fesselndes Adventure
Grayout ist ein erfrischendes textbasiertes Adventure. Auch wenn das ein oder andere Rätsel sehr knifflig ist, hat mich die Geschichte von Alaine und ihrer Welt bis zuletzt gefesselt. Sehr gelungen!
Minimal design, unique, weird and frustrating
Although it relied heavily on text, it used color and lower and upper capitalization to separate the characters. Eerie and one of a kind storyline and frustrating game play. And that what made playing Grayout a fun experience. Some puzzles were easy and some puzzles made me surprised that I figured it out. I used walk thoughs for hard puzzles. The characters were three dimensional and the backstory and details were slowly revealed so you understood as the story went.
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Great!
It takes about 90 minutes to work through and would have gladly have kept playing. So glad to see the makers of a blackbar making something in a similar flavour. I hope they make more!
